Amazon employees say they were laid off by email
Fired Amazon workers griped about the e-retail giant using email to inform them they were no longer needed by the company, according to a published report.
At least five employees who were laid off Wednesday said they received a cold-blooded missive from management, according to Insider.
“Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated,” wrote Beth Galetti, the top executive at Amazon’s human resources department, in one of the emails.
“You are no longer required to perform any work on Amazon’s behalf effective immediately.”
The Seattle-based e-commerce giant is culling 18,000 jobs from its payroll as part of cost-cutting measures.
The five ex-workers said that none of them were summoned to face-to-face meetings with their managers before they were fired.
“Everyone is pretty upset,” one of the canned workers said. “We just woke up to an email today.”
Immediately after receiving the email, the fired employees said that their office badges were no longer working and that they were cut off from access to the company’s internal computer system.
“Our primary mode of communication will be through internal email on your non-Amazon device,” Galetti wrote in the email.
To add insult to injury, the laid-off workers were told that because they could no longer access their work computers, they needed to add their work emails and Amazon videoconferencing app Chime to their personal devices, according to Insider.
An Amazon spokesperson referred The Post to a statement from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who said earlier this month that management was “deeply aware that these role eliminations are difficult for people, and we don’t take these decisions lightly or underestimate how much they might affect the lives of those who are impacted.”
Other tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta, Snap and Twitter have also downsized in the face of economic uncertainty across the technology sector.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella circulated a companywide memo on Wednesday announcing that the Windows software giant will be shedding around 5% of its 221,000-strong workforce — or 10,000 employees — from its payroll.
Hours before Nadella’s memo went out to employees, Microsoft hired famed “The Police” rocker Sting to perform at an intimate gathering of 50 people on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Galetti’s email to terminated Amazonians was sent with the subject line “Subject: Important information about your role.”
“Today we are taking the very difficult step of reducing roles across several of our businesses,” Galetti wrote in the email obtained by Insider.
“Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated.”
“This is not a decision that was made lightly, and we are committed to providing support to ease the transition out of Amazon, including a separation payment, transitional benefits as applicable by country, and external job placement services,” the email read.
Laid off employees of other companies that are shrinking headcounts during turbulent economic times said that the way in which they were told about being laid off left a bad taste in their mouths.
Last week, several bankers who were canned by Wall Street investment giant Goldman Sachs told The Post that they were invited to “meetings” at the company’s New York headquarters via emailed calendar invites — only to be told by their team head that they were being fired.
One source told The Post that the meeting to which laid off employees were invited to was “put on [their] calendar under false pretenses.”